Pure Self-Awareness precedes consciousness, and without Awareness, consciousness could not exist. Identification with consciousness as the source of life is to believe in the possibility of going outside of Pure Awareness to associate with the idea of death. To identify without Source is to believe it is possible to self-associate with the concept of a separate will, of which consciousness is the manifestation. Mind in its wandering wishes to be “self as projected”, and the results are perceived as the manifest world.
It could be said that consciousness is like the resistance, or the pull of a sling shot as one projects content from Source, and the Awareness of the Witness/Observer, that which does not identify with the content of consciousness but the stillness of non-resistance, is like the release.
In consciousness it is as if one either identifies with and experiences the imagined self as being the pull of the resistance as the sling is stretched, or as enjoying the release as the sling is let go. Resistance vs pleasure are in the realm of consciousness; awareness of Source is Awareness of only Love. One is not conscious of Awareness but Aware of consciousness. When mind is conscious of identification with levels or degrees of love vs not-love, mind is not in a state of Pure Love or Pure Awareness. Self-association with duality has everything to do with mind’s thought-based projections away from Awareness of Love, and thus has nothing to do with its Source.
Perception, or the sense of consciousness, can only identify with the duality of resistance vs release, it cannot identify with the body of the self that it believes is projected (consciousness can only identify with the projection/thought itself, not its seeming effect), and neither can it know the Higher Self that is ever present, yet seemingly separated by belief. Awareness is ever unaffected by what consciousness cannot Know. The Higher Self knows of nothing but Itself as Truth, and so does not compute resistance vs release, nor does it notice the projection of an “idea of self”. Mind can, via free will, temporarily believe itself to be separate from Source, yet always at the level of Awareness Itself, mind ever knows only Truth. Mind rejoices/rests fully in Truth, only partially in projection, and it is only in the return to Source that consciousness is capable of Joy. Joy in consciousness is a qualitative reflection of the Love of Awareness Itself. Identification with the Witness/Observer of Awareness vs the experiencer of consciousness engenders Joy.
As the sling shot of projected identity is released and resistance dissolves with inertia, consciousness computes through the upside of duality the sense of relief. One knows with ever present internal Awareness that it was only a thought that seemed to block one from Source, and thought cannot affect True Identification; thought cannot affect Source. The seeming birth and death of thought cannot affect Eternity. As thought dies, mind always returns to the state of Truth. Thus, the way back home, as the imagined self is released from the resistance of “leaving”, is naturally filled with Joy.
Darcie French 